Chamberlain was delusional.
“The steering mechanism was hinky, though.”
“Hinky?” He glanced down the line of cells at Dede, then turned his back to her.
“I’ve never seen one torqued quite like that from an accident,” James said. “What did you hit?”
“Nothing. I just suddenly lost control of the car. Are you saying it had been tampered with?” Lantry said, keeping his voice down.
“Only if someone was trying to kill you.” James laughed as if he’d made a joke. “I guess in your profession that’s always a possibility, though. Guess they missed you this time.” He was still chuckling when Lantry hung up.
He glanced back at Dede again. She was holding on to the bars, watching him with that hopeful look on her angelic face again. Damn.
As he walked back to her cell, he pictured Frank Chamberlain, a handsome, well-to-do, powerful man in Houston who didn’t need to resort to murder to get what he wanted. “You say Frank called to warn you. But if Frank wanted to protect you, why didn’t he break you out himself?”
“How did Frank tell you he made his fortune?” she asked, the change of subject giving him whiplash.
“A killing on Wall Street.”
She smiled ruefully. “He told me his grandmother left him the money.”
Lantry had never cared how his clients made their money as long as he got paid. Frank Chamberlain had paid right away. The check had gone through, and Lantry had put the case behind him and gone to Montana for a family meeting on the Trails West Ranch, where his father and new wife had just settled. He hadn’t planned to stay so long, but he’d gotten involved in some family legal business and then it was almost Christmas….
“Frank lied to both of us, and worse, involved us in his past.” Dede met his gaze with a challenging look. “You’re starting to believe me, aren’t you?”
The woman didn’t know a Lamborghini from a Ferrari. Did he really think she knew the brake line from the steering mechanism?
“Even if I bought into this, the state is sending someone to pick you up in—” he glanced at his watch “—less than—”
Her bloodcurdling scream made him jump back. She began to rattle the bars, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded and reached out to stop her.
She grabbed the front of his shirt and the strings from his bolo tie. He heard fabric rip as he tried to pull away, the bolo tie tightening around his neck. The door to the sheriff’s office clanged open, and the still-wet-behind-the-ears deputy came running toward them.
It all happened so fast. Lantry made the mistake of trying to calm her, afraid he would hurt her if he pulled away too hard. Dede had wound her fingers into the fabric of his shirt and was hanging on to his bolo tie as if it were a lifeline.
The deputy jumped into the middle of the ruckus.
Lantry didn’t see her get the deputy’s gun. It just suddenly appeared in Dede’s hand, pointed at the two of them at the same time the screaming stopped.
In the deafening silence that followed, all Lantry could hear was the blood pounding in his ears as he stared at the woman with the gun.
Dede was so calm now he shuddered to see that she knew her way around weapons and probably the steering mechanisms on Lamborghinis as well. He couldn’t believe how he’d been taken in by her. Probably the same way poor Frank Chamberlain had.
The deputy had turned a sickening shade of green.
“Take it easy,” Lantry said, not sure if the words were meant for Dede or the deputy or himself. “Don’t do anything rash.” How could she do anything more rash than what she’d just done short of shooting them both now at point-blank range?
She barked out instructions to the green deputy, who did as he was told. “Now put the plastic cuffs on the lawyer. Loop them through that fancy belt of his.”
“Like hell,” Lantry said.
“I’m sure you don’t want to see anyone get hurt here, do you, Mr. Corbett?”
He glared at her.
She pointed the deputy’s pistol at the young man’s heart. “Make sure they are good and tight.”
Lantry had no option. He couldn’t take the chance she would shoot the deputy.
“Now open the cell,” she said, still holding the gun on the deputy. “Hurry up. We don’t want to see any innocent people get hurt because you didn’t move fast enough.”
As instructed, the deputy opened the cell and traded places with her. Dede closed the cell door, keeping the pistol on Lantry, and took the keys.
“Come on, Mr. Corbett. We’ll be leaving now. Cross your fingers that no one tries to stop us. As crazy as I am, who knows what I might do?”
Lantry bit down on a reply and, with the gun barrel pressed into his back, let her lead him out of the sheriff’s department and into the snowy, still-dark early morning.
Chapter Two
There were no cars in the parking lot other than Lantry’s pickup and the deputy’s beat-up old Mazda, both covered with snow. The blizzard Lantry had been warned about on the news had finally blown in.
“Just a minute.” Dede reached into his coat pocket and dug out his cell phone and keys. She hit the automatic lock release, the lights of the pickup flashing on.
As Dede walked him to his pickup, wind whirled the large, thick flakes around them as if they were in a snow globe.
He could imagine how ridiculous the two of them looked. Him in handcuffs tethered to his belt and a petite woman in a Santa costume holding a gun on him.
But unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone around at this hour—and in the middle of a blizzard—to see them.
“You don’t want to do this,” Lantry said as they reached his pickup. “This is only making your situation worse.”
“A hotshot lawyer like you? I’m sure you can get me off without even any jail time,” Dede said, keeping the pistol pressed into his back.
“You can’t possibly think that I can make all of this go away. You pulled a gun on a sheriff’s deputy and escaped from two mental hospitals and a jail cell.”
“I did what I had to do,” she said, pressing the gun barrel into his back. “When the time comes, I know you can make a judge understand that. Anyway, what would you have done under the same circumstances?”
He didn’t know. He thought of his brother Dalton’s criminally insane first wife. The law didn’t always protect people. Oftentimes it was used against the person who needed and deserved protection the most.
Dede
